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Morrevail

I see no mention of them in the books nor on the official Rings wiki, but in the game you can find them in Angmar, Moria, and a few bits of Mirkwood. What are they? Is there anything about them in the appendices, or are they just a species made for the game?

ps. by Morrevail I mean the winged lady things that look like Lara Croft in the face. Not sure about the spelling.

They are a Turbine invention with no connection to the Lore that I can think of except perhaps a vague suggestion towards Thuringwethil (who received a one-line mention in the story of Beren and Luthien).

"You can't fight the Enemy with his own Ring without turning into an Enemy" - J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter # 81

I see no mention of them in the books nor on the official Rings wiki, but in the game you can find them in Angmar, Moria, and a few bits of Mirkwood. What are they? Is there anything about them in the appendices, or are they just a species made for the game?

ps. by Morrevail I mean the winged lady things that look like Lara Croft in the face. Not sure about the spelling.

Silmarillion mentions vampires. Sauron took shape of one and Thuringwethil as noted by the previous post.

We also need to look at the meaning of 'Morroval' (Black wing, Mor + roval), and perhaps this passage from The Hobbit:

"Soon actual darkness was coming into a stormy sky; while still the great bats swirled about the heads and ears of elves and men, or fastened vampire-like on the stricken."

Clearly Merrevail aren't just bats, but there is certainly a similarity between this, and both their name and their physical appearance.

Are you trying to link a Turbine-made name and appearance for a game monster to a quote from The Hobbit, and use that tenuous link as evidence that Merrevail existed in Tolkien's Middle-earth? Was the quote even from dialog?

Are you trying to link a Turbine-made name and appearance for a game monster to a quote from The Hobbit, and use that tenuous link as evidence that Merrevail existed in Tolkien's Middle-earth? Was the quote even from dialog?

From The Hobbit, the chapter "The Clouds Burst" which is 17th chapter: "Still more suddenly a darkness came on with dreadful swiftness! A black cloud hurried over the sky. Winter thunder on a wild wind rolled roaring up and rumbled in the [Lonely] Mountain, and lightning lit its peak. And beneath the thunder another blackness could be seen whirling forward; but it did not come with the wind, it came from the North, like a vast cloud of birds, so dense that no light could be seen between their wings."

And Gandalf said: "Behold! the bats are above his [Bolg, son of Azog] army like a sea of locusts."

A page forward it is written that "-- but the bat-cloud came, flying lower, over the shoulder of the Mountain, and whirled above them shutting out the light and filling them [Dain and his dwarves, Elvenking and his elves, Bard and his men] with dread."

***

I haven't seen those "Morrevail" in game but I quoted these paragraphs from The Hobbit to bring some clarification on the subject of those vampire-like creatures quoted previously by Xandarien_PoTI. In my opinion they [the bats] were something uncommon - Bilbo wasn't afraid of bats in the cavern of goblins (or so I remember, I might be wrong 'tho), so why would the company of "heroes" fear these bats if they weren't something different?

Hope this helps.

"'Nonetheless they will have need of wood', said Aulë and he went on with his smith-work."

Are you trying to link a Turbine-made name and appearance for a game monster to a quote from The Hobbit, and use that tenuous link as evidence that Merrevail existed in Tolkien's Middle-earth? Was the quote even from dialog?

Er no, I'm not trying to prove they existed in Middle Earth in the slightest, I was giving possible evidence as to where Turbine got the idea for them from (the translation of the name being very close to 'bat', after all, and the Gnomish word is not well known, being published in one journal (Cwildred)).